Email: keith@ucmjlawyers.com
Phone: (224) 935-6172
Keith Scherer is a former Air Force JAG who joined in 2001. He served as a prosecutor at Ellsworth AFB and then at Keesler AFB, switched to defense work at Keesler, and separated in 2005. He then co-founded the firm with Greg Gagne.
From 1989 to 1992, before law school, he was an enlisted member of the Air Force Intelligence Command as a Russian linguist stationed in England.
He earned his B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995) and his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law (1998). Since then he has focused on complex criminal defense in federal and military courts.
For over 20 years he has defended service members in courts-martial and administrative proceedings across all branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard) both CONUS and OCONUS.
His cases cover the full range of UCMJ offenses, from murder and rape to CSAM, ICAC investigations, fraud, and officer misconduct. Clients have walked away with dismissals, acquittals, and dropped charges. Others kept their retirements and their careers.
His federal experience includes wire fraud, mortgage fraud, money laundering, tax fraud, RICO actions, CSAM, and grand jury representations for witnesses and targets. He has also handled professional licensing boards and other administrative proceedings for business and military professionals.
Keith has been peer-selected after a rigorous nomination and voting process by Leading Lawyers in the practice area of Criminal Law and Military Law as a Leading Lawyer, a distinction awarded to only the top 5% of all attorneys practicing in Illinois.
Through decades of casework he has developed deep familiarity with medical, toxicological, and psychological evidence, digital forensics, and the expert testimony that decides complex sex offense, CSAM, and conspiracy cases.
He has appeared as a media commentator on military criminal issues and consulted on baseball-related drug investigations (BALCO prosecution, congressional steroid hearings, Barry Bonds case), drawing on his background as a published baseball writer (Baseball Prospectus annual, Mustaches and Mayhem, Juice, Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Blunders, contributions to Baseball Prospectus Online, The Hardball Times, espn.com, and SABR).
He is admitted to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, service appellate courts, the Seventh Circuit, Northern District of Illinois, Federal Trial Bar, and Illinois state courts.